The present invention relates generally to audio and wireless integrated circuits and more specifically to integrated circuits including both wireless transceivers and audio processors.
Computers are leaving the confines of the office and are heading to our family rooms. Once there, they are taking on the role of a provider of entertainment including video and audio information. This means that computer systems need to be designed to handle and process audio data in new and more efficient ways—systems designed for spread sheets and silent web pages could likely be improved.
NVIDIA Corporation of Santa Clara, Calif., has recently developed a breakthrough technology known as distributed processing. NVIDIA is currently applying the principles and benefits of distributed processing to various computational tasks such as graphics, networking, and other functions. Simply put, distributed processing allocates the computational load of an electronic system to the circuits in the system that are best able to efficiently handle the individual tasks.
Accordingly, NVIDIA has been applying the benefits of distributed processing to audio information. By off-loading audio processing from a central processing unit to a more specialized audio processing unit, the CPU is freed to perform other tasks and the audio related tasks are completed more efficiently by the specialized APU.
At the same time, as our computers join us in the family room, we would appreciate it if they left their tangled and unsightly wires behind. The fun of having a nice surround sound system is somewhat diminished if wires are spread around in a spider-web fashion. This cabling can be discarded by using one or more of the various wireless technologies that are currently available or that will be developed in the future.
Thus, what is needed are circuits, methods, and apparatus that make use of the concept of distributed processing in order to spread the computational workload, while at the same time incorporating wireless technology to ease the clutter that would otherwise be created.